“Water” a solo exhibition by Monica Jahan Bose in Richmond, Virginia.
Curated by Naoko Wowsugi. Please email the artist and RSVP to attend the opening and workshop on May 31, 2016.

Bangladeshi-American artist and activist Monica Jahan Bose uses painting, performance, video, photography, printmaking, and community engagement to address climate change. She references mythology, personal histories, and everyday objects and garments to create fragmented, symbolic narratives. She uses the sari and sari blouse to refer to women’s lives. Water is an enduring theme in her work, speaking to life, climate, sustenance, death, and renewal.

Water is the source of life but also causes destruction through increasing cyclones, storm surges, and rising sea levels, all resulting from climate change and our excessive consumption of energy. Bose is the creator of Storytelling with Saris, a longterm collaborative art and advocacy project highlighting the resilience of women in Katakhali, Bangladesh, a remote island community severely impacted by climate change and expected to disappear unless the world takes action now. She is working with 12 women from Katakhali, her ancestral village, and bringing their stories to the world. The project includes printmaking and writing on saris, journal writing, as well as research, education, adaptation training, and advocacy on climate change. Bose is conducting climate pledge workshops around the US, where participants learn about the impacts of climate change and make pledges directly on saris to reduce their carbon footprint. These climate pledge saris are transported to Bangladesh and shared with (and ultimately worn as garments by) the coastal women of Katakhali. Bose will be holding climate pledge workshop on May 31, 2016.

About the artist: Monica Jahan Bose is an artist, lawyer, and activist based in Washington, DC and Bangladesh. She studied art at Wesleyan University and Santiniketan, India, and has a law degree from Columbia University. In addition to more than 20 years working as a visual artist, Bose has founded and run several non-profits and practiced and taught environmental and human rights law. She has exhibited her artwork extensively in the US, Bangladesh, France, Japan, and India. Her paintings were recently selected to represent the US in “1 in 3,” the World Bank’s global exhibition on gender-based violence, which featured 30 international artists. In 2014, she was invited to present Storytelling with Saris at the US EPA, the Brooklyn Museum, the Edward M. Kennedy Center in Bangladesh, and SELECT during Art Basel-Miami Beach. In 2015, she had a solo exhibition at the Bangladesh National Museum. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including grants from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, supported by the National Endowment on the Arts. Bose serves on the board of Samhati, a US-based Bangladeshi women’s organization that creates eco-empowerment projects for low-income women in Bangladesh. She is also a board-member of the New York-based South Asian Women’s Creative Collective.

Please join us in New York for the premiere of the UN-funded film “Thirty Million” at the UN Secretariat, followed by a panel discussion with film director Daniel Price and artist/activist Monica Jahan Bose. The film is about the impacts of climate change on Bangladesh. Monica appears in the film to speak about some of those impacts. You must RSVP to Carl Mercer to attend at carl.mercer@undp.org

Floating/Drowning, a performance, installation, and art action by Monica Jahan Bose, is a a collective response to climate change. Bose collaborates with women from her ancestral village in Bangladesh as well as residents of Miami to create a transborder physical and emotional link between coastal peoples. One Billion Rising – Miami will be joining and co-sponsoring the performance. We are facing catastrophic changes to our planet from climate change, and our president elect has vowed to back out of the recent Paris Climate Agreement. The performance triggers individual and community action on climate change, regardless of federal support. Saris with writing from Bangladesh and Miami are used to establish a people to people agreement on climate, which will move from the fair to the streets to the rising sea and the bay.

This is a two-part project at two different locations:
Satellite Art Show, 1510 Collins Ave, 2nd Fl, Miami Beach, FL, Fri., Dec. 2, 2016, 1-3 PM.
Superfine – The Fairest Fair 56 NE 29th St., back garden, Miami, FL, Dec. 3, 2016, 4- 6 PM

The performance is part of Storytelling with Saris, a collaborative art and advocacy project highlighting gender and climate change.

Performance participants include: Farhana Akhter, Marya Meyer, Kathryn Villano, Nitin Mukul, Leah Stoddard, and more to come.

Vocals: Juanita-marie Franklin

Image credit: Ei Jane.

Floating/Drowning, a performance, installation, and art action by Monica Jahan Bose, is a a collective response to climate change. Bose collaborates with women from her ancestral village in Bangladesh as well as residents of Miami to create a transborder physical and emotional link between coastal peoples. One Billion Rising – Miami will be joining and co-sponsoring the performance. We are facing catastrophic changes to our planet from climate change, and our president elect has vowed to back out of the recent Paris Climate Agreement. The performance triggers individual and community action on climate change, regardless of federal support. Saris with writing from Bangladesh and Miami are used to establish a people to people agreement on climate, which will move from the fair to the streets to the rising sea and the bay.

This is a two-part project at two different locations:
Satellite Art Show, 1510 Collins Ave, 2nd Fl, Miami Beach, FL, Fri., Dec. 2, 2016, 1-3 PM.
Superfine – The Fairest Fair 56 NE 29th St., back garden, Miami, FL, Dec. 3, 2016, 4- 6 PM

The performance is part of Storytelling with Saris, a collaborative art and advocacy project highlighting gender and climate change.

Performance participants include: Farhana Akhter, Marya Meyer, Kathryn Villano, Nitin Mukul, Leah Stoddard, and more to come.

Vocals: Juanita-marie Franklin

Image credit: Ei Jane.

1.5 • C installation at Ward !2 Group Exhibition of S&R Studio Program fellows
Site specific video installation with woodblock printed saris, lightbulbs, and snowglobes

Exhibition dates: December 7-December 17, 2016 (daily from 1-4 pm). Register for viewing after the opening. Click for more details.

One point five degrees is the maximum increase allowable from preindustrial global temperatures to avoid catastrophic effects of climate change. This was adopted as the “aspirational” goal of the Paris Agreement by 195 nations in December 2015. The agreement limits the temperature increase to no more than 2 degrees, but aspires to keep the increase within 1.5 degrees. Island and low-lying countries like Bangladesh vehemently pushed for 1.5 degrees. We have already increased the world’s temperature by almost one degree.
The saris were printed and painted in collaboration with women from my ancestral village on Barobaishdia Island, Bangladesh. These women have recently learned to read and are confronting, learning about, and adapting to climate change. The island may become submerged unless the world takes action. The video is a sample from my future film “Rising Up to Climate Change: Storytelling with Saris,” made in collaboration with Leena Jayaswal and Shefali Akhter Shetu.

The used lightbulbs were collected from DC residents in Ward 1 and 2, including S&R artists and staff and Halcyon fellows and staff, who I encouraged to switch to LED lights to reduce their carbon footprint. The snowglobes are part of a 30-year old family collection, visually representing the world drowning from climate change.

Ward 12
Ward 12 is the culmination of the creative work by 12 DC artists awarded studio space in the historic Fillmore School in Georgetown, built in 1893. These artists were selected for the powerful message of their artistic work, and their potential to make future contributions to the artistic and cultural fabric of Washington, DC. Dedicated studio space was provided at the Fillmore School in order for each artist to pursue their creative work freely, in any manner that they choose.

Their individual work utilizes a broad range of artistic media: painting, sculpture and installation, performance, literature, film making, fashion, and dance. They are all united by their expressions of social consciousness and awareness of some of the most intractable collective issues of our present moment; from the harmful effects of climate change on communities, the crisis in Syria, to the future of our urban environments. This exhibition celebrates their depth of vision, critical thinking, and insight into complex issues that surround us.

The exhibition will present works, screenings, and performances by:

Konshens the MC | Mattias Kraemer | Daniel Pheonix Singh | Eames Armstrong | Grethe Wittrock | Monica Jahan Bose | Anna Kaminski | Erik Moe | Ayana Zaire Cotton | Marion Colomer | Anna Tsouhlarakis | Reilly Dowd

Talk title: “From Bangladesh to Brooklyn: Transnational Art Practices” by Monica Jahan Bose

Abstract: Monica Jahan Bose has lived in Bangladesh, the U.K., the United States, Japan, France, Pakistan, and India. Using the sari as a symbol for women’s lives, she has presented her work in tiny villages in Bangladesh, at art fairs during Miami Basel, and on the streets of Brooklyn. Her talk presents her recent projects and considers how South Asia and Bangladesh enter conceptual frameworks and art practices in the US, the extent to which artists in Bangladesh are influenced by the outside world, and the impact and interplay of colonization and globalization on the art world in South Asia and the US.

Bio:
Monica Jahan Bose is a Bangladeshi-American artist, lawyer, and activist whose work spans performance, painting, film, photography, printmaking, and interdisciplinary projects. Her solo performance/installations and exhibitions have been presented at Art Asia Miami, Twelve Gates Gallery, the Bangladesh National Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the DUMBO Arts Festival, (e)merge art fair, SELECT Art Fair (during Miami Basel), UNESCO, Galerie Deborah Zafman, and many other venues. She studied art at Wesleyan University and Santiniketan (India) and has a law degree from Columbia University. She is the creator of “Storytelling with Saris,” a longterm collaborative art and advocacy project with 12 women from her ancestral island village, which is adversely impacted by climate change. Monica lives and works in Washington, D.C. and Bangladesh.

The sari installation in the atrium is called “Power” and is part of the “4 + 1” Exhibition curated by Shanthi Chandrasekar. The opening is at 7 pm on March 9, 2017. The show is up through April 30th. Hours from 8:30 am to 9:30 pm on weekdays, on Saturdays 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. and Sundays 12:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.

A 16-minute sample preview of the upcoming film “Rising up to Climate Change: Storytelling with Saris” along with the UN film “Thirty Million” will be screened in the NY offices of Earthjustice and shown via webinar to their offices around the country. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Monica Jahan Bose.

For the VISION DC Arts and Urban Innovation Summit 2017, Monica Jahan Bose will create a video installation called TOGETHER.

TOGETHER speaks to climate change with collaborative saris made in Bangladesh and Washington, D.C. as well as a new video work.

There are panels, performances, and installations throughout the day. More details about the summit here.